Perham Knowledge Bowl Team Qualifies for State, Continuing Recent Revival

Maddox Wagner knows the feeling well: hovering over the buzzer, listening to a question unfold word by word, calculating the precise moment to cut in. Push too soon and the question's critical information hasn't landed yet. Wait too long, and another team claims the points.

Three years ago, Wagner helped Perham end a roughly 30-year absence from the state Knowledge Bowl tournament, the Yellowjackets' first trip since the 1990s. Now he's going back. Wagner, along with returning teammate Noah Brasel, will compete at state on April 9-10 as part of a five-member squad that also includes Peter Carrlson, Ewan Brandvold, and Sophia Lamb, with second-year head coach Matt Lamb guiding the group.

The previous Perham state team, which also included Stella Strong, Madeleine Lamb, and Elsa Brandvold, qualified by finishing second at regionals before competing in Brainerd. Madeleine Lamb captured the improbability of that moment at the time: "It's kind of crazy; I don't think any of us were really expecting it."

Expectations have shifted. Coach Lamb, who served as assistant on that earlier squad, now leads the program and is deliberate about where credit belongs. "They have such a broad range of knowledge," he said. "I give credit to the other teachers in the school for teaching these kids the things that I can't begin to understand. Because the level of education that they get through the rest of the faculty prepares them for these rounds." Lamb, Perham's band director, is in his second year as head coach.

Ewan Brandvold described the team's competitive edge as breadth: anything taught in a classroom is eligible for competition questions. Brasel outlined the format, which consists of one written round and four oral buzzer rounds, with points accumulating throughout.

This season's results bear out the depth. At a Knowledge Bowl invitational in Moorhead, Perham entered three teams in a 27-team field and placed third, fifth, and seventh. At regionals, the squad secured a top-two finish to earn the state berth.

The Knowledge Bowl run arrives alongside a standout spring for Perham's academic extracurriculars. The school's speech team won the Subsection 6A West Speech Tournament, with 39 of 43 competing members advancing to the Section tournament.

Organized through the Minnesota Service Cooperative for students in grades 9-12, Knowledge Bowl does not use a traditional elimination format. Every team competes in every round, with groupings reshuffled based on cumulative score after each, rewarding teams that sustain performance across a full competition day.

Ewan Brandvold follows in the footsteps of Elsa Brandvold, who was on Perham's breakthrough state squad three years ago, threading a family connection through both chapters of the program's revival.

TRY THIS KNOWLEDGE BOWL QUESTION

Test your own buzzer instincts with the kind of question that comes up in competition: What is the official state gemstone of Minnesota?

Answer: The Lake Superior agate, designated in 1969.